Learning Log The Feynman Technique - is a way of learning by explaining a concept in simple words. It helps identify gaps in understanding and improves retention. Internalising - means understanding something so well that it becomes a natural part of your thinking and actions through practice. A hypothesis - is a testable prediction or explanation based on observations. It is used to investigate ideas through evidence. An assumption - is something accepted as true without proof. It is important to question assumptions to avoid incorrect conclusions.

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Today's meeting log: Discussed the importance of intellectual honesty and psychological safety within the team. Emphasized documenting learnings, blockers, and meeting notes consistently.

Last week's reflection: I mostly held back. Every time I had to put an opinion out there, I'd freeze up. Proof's been a place to slowly practice getting out of that, talking daily, writing daily, having to actually show up instead of hiding. I'm not fully out of my shell yet, I still don't love how my voice sounds, but it's been a real, steady shift over just one week. I used to treat "I can't communicate" as a fixed fact about myself. Practicing daily, with actual support from RK and this program, showed me it's trainable, I noticed real, small improvement just from repetition. That's not a belief anymore, it's something I've now watched happen to myself. What I'd tell someone who's also struggling- It won't make the fear disappear overnight. But it gives you an actual training ground, most people never get one for something like communication or confidence, they just avoid the discomfort indefinitely. Progress here is quiet and doesn't always feel like it's happening in the moment, but a good mentor helps you actually catch it happening, and that's worth more than it sounds like on paper.

Meeting notes with Surya (iraiga founder) On curiosity & articulation: Curiosity - explore, ask questions, seek new information and try to figure out things Articulation matters just as much: clearly breaking a problem down in your own head before asking AI for help. Question every AI output, LLMs hallucinate, don't take answers at face value. On fundamentals: Early-level focus should be fundamentals, time complexity, space complexity, not skipping ahead. On software/engineering judgment: Good software isn't about knowing the most, it's about making the best decisions with what you have. On networking: Community events and volunteering are real ways to build a network from scratch, not just cold outreach.

Today's meeting log: Two traits matter more than raw technical skill right now: curiosity and high agency. Curiosity -> leads you to ask the right questions. High agency -> gives you the will to actually go ask them (and act on the answers), rather than waiting to be told. Technical skills still matter, but they're not the differentiator anymore. Some technical aspects still matter a lot, like system design, distributed systems, networking, DSA, etc. What differentiates now is code + judgment p.s: acknowledging someone else's point ("I agree with X") counts as a form of appreciation, worth doing more consciously. p.p.s: look into the 5 Whys technique, a way of repeatedly asking "why" on a problem to trace back to its actual root cause instead of stopping at the first symptom.

#10: Find a real problem first Talked to 3 students, at different times, about problems they're facing. Without prompting each other, all three raised the same core issue: they're confused about internships and upskilling. Specifically, they don't know which skills actually matter, and don't know where or how to find good opportunities. A second pattern also came up: a belief that better opportunities are out of reach because they're from a "lower-tier" college, an assumption made before even trying, not based on having actually been rejected. So the real problem isn't a single thing, it's two, stacked: (1) a lack of clear direction on what to learn or where to look, and (2) a self-imposed belief that certain opportunities aren't available to them at all.

#9 Automate a task Built an n8n automation that fetches news titles + links from defence.in 's RSS feed and sends them to me via Telegram. It was a fun project to do!

#8 Make a page, show it to 5 people Showed my RN developer portfolio to 5 people & asked for feedback. I'm still working on the projects section, but overall it was a positive experience. Got some suggestions and kind words back. Will be adding more projects and UI screenshots/previews. Open to suggestions/reviews

#7 build a screen log built a mobile app screen of alarm clock on RN expo Got stuck on flex layout, again. Need to learn Flexbox properly instead of trial-and-error-ing every time.

#6 collecting data log: Practiced data structuring using example data (roughly based on my experience attending winter school at IISc, BLR): food item prices across 5 canteens. Visualized it as stacked bar chart to compare total price at a glance. random lore: one specific canteen there was suspiciously cheap, like half-price-plus-a-rupee on literally everything compared to normal campus prices

Built a small mobile app with expo to log how I'm spending my time. It has easy to use ui- select time slot/s, pick a colour and give it a title. next step would be to add persistence and one more screen to show weekly trends. I've named the project "Where'd All The Time Go" or WATT-Go-- basically for people who easily lose track of time :)

#5: Change a tutorial, log Tried to build a currency converter mobile app today by myself first and got stuck on props. Wrote: ``` const renderItem = (item: Currency) => { ... } ``` and passed renderItem to FlatList assuming FlatList would pass just the Currency item directly FlatList internally calls renderItem with an object shaped like {item, index, separators} so, item should be destructured out of it. the correct approach would be const renderItem = ({ item }: { item: Currency }) => { ... }

Today's meeting notes: - we will be having recurring meets to discuss progress & blockers, if any - decisions made in the meeting should be noted down and shared with team members Importance of logging: not logging decisions, reasoning, changes can show up later during an escalation or failure, when someone has to go back and reconstruct "why did we do it this way" or "who decided this," and there's no trail. It's very important and non-negotiable.

#3: How does WhatsApp work? (my mental model) On the user level: UI (functional, code/logic) + local storage + server + network. Local storage: actual message history, media, statuses, contacts cache. Server: holds messages temporarily, just long enough to deliver them if the receiver is offline, then deletes them once delivered. Network: WebSocket like persistent connection. WhatsApp being a native app just opens a raw TCP connection directly to the server. Flow: user1 → server → user2. If user2 is offline, server holds the message until they reconnect. Ticks: - 1 tick = sent to server - 2 ticks = delivered to user2's device - blue ticks = user2 opened it, this is actually a second separate message traveling back (user2 → server → user1) /n Encryption: server only sees metadata (sender, receiver, timestamp) to route the message, never the payload. Payload is encrypted on-device before sending, only the receiving phone can decrypt it. Server never holds the key.

wrote a blog on rendering & re-rendering in React (useState, useEffect, DOM/virtual DOM/fiber tree). Trying to explain it forced the understanding further.

a refresher about react native and rendering from this beginner friendly article on medium why and how react native is "native" (it uses native ui components like android.view.View for android for example) and what is it not: a WebView or a DOM-based framework like traditional web apps

I would fix expo go mobile app to have options in app to be compatible with different expo versions so i would not need to download different sdk's and uninstall and install again and again

I picked Ship, optimise if users complain over Optimise it now.

running the expo app often leads to crashing...which sometimes gets resolved by tunneling (but often tunneling fails with ngrok error) someone who's worked on expo maybe could help with the most stable version of expo or some other work around would be really helpful! clearing the cache, using tunneling, tried different versions (i currently use the v55 expo go)

a brief intro about react native rendering architecture Old Bridge & New architecture

I built a small background changer app today which uses useState and a random hex generator function in React Native CLI

I picked Mostly sharpening fundamentals but also applying whenever anything interesting/relevant comes up. — not Sharpen fundamentals / interview prep or Apply to more roles.

I'm stuck on icons!

I built a react native (expo) mobile app to rate github repositories (ongoing)

I picked to revise the basics over hoarding concepts because revision help concepts stick longer

I built adopt a pet App with React Native (cli)

I picked native CLI over expo because abstraction without understanding creates knowledge gaps

I built a react native (cli) password generator app